Interfaith and Gender

Are women’s voices from each tradition presented as authentic? authoritative? alternative? (at all?)

How are gender-specific power issues acknowledged?

If women cannot be “clergy” or take certain leadership roles in some faith communities, how can interfaith “clergy” efforts be inclusive?

How are worship and learning experiences organized across the egalitarian/gender-segregation divide?

How are historical and contemporary gender inequalities addressed?

These were among the questions I had, as a newcomer to interfaith dialogue a few years ago. While I did not expect to find “answers,” necessarily, I did expect that, after years of interfaith dialogue around the world, there would be at least a framework for considering them. I assumed there would be a literature and some regular practices in place.

But my queries to practitioners of interfaith dialogue met largely with blank stares, sometimes anger: Why threaten a delicate set of communications with a “side issue”?

I have since discovered some academic literature on the subject but very few — I found one, actually, but assume there must be others — sets of dialogue guidelines that specifically address gender.

When I set up InterfaithandGender.org, in 2011, I wrote that it was “launched in a kind of desperation.” In 2014, as I move resources from that site to “A Song Every Day,” I still hope to create a place to share thoughts and resources wherever this topic has already been considered. While there has been some movement over these few years, I don’t think enough has changed for me to re-write this closing paragraph:

Where it is usually an afterthought at best, let us begin to address — explicitly and with care — the ways in which gender interacts with interfaith experience. Working together we can develop a framework for asking helpful questions and putting gender-related issues on the table in interfaith dialogue.

If I’m wrong, and I’ve somehow missed a groundswell of activity and improvement, please enlighten me: I have not followed this as closely as I would have liked.